What else is Nicola and her secretive SNP State keeping from us?

FORMER Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s dictum that ‘most of politics is presentation’ has always struck me as a touch cynical. In my experience, those who enter Parliament are there for the right reasons and to put in a shift.

But maybe the bluff-speaking Yorkshireman had a point. As there seems to be a growing chasm between Nicola Sturgeon’s presentational performance during the Covid-19 outbreak and the operational performance of her Government, whether what gets said actually gets done and what they choose to keep secret.

Ms Sturgeon’s daily updates, delivered to a UK-wide television audience in a stripped back room, are clear, concise and direct. Sideswipes at the Prime Minister and the UK Government – on messaging, timetabling and communication – are artfully couched in velvet, while SNP outriders take their cue to stick in the boot online.

And it’s not just the notorious cybernats, but officials inside and outside of Parliament. On Thursday, when the First Minister was haughtily telling Holyrood that no one should dare allow party politics to creep into their questioning of her government, official SNP HQ (run by her husband) was plastering social media with graphics stating ‘Westminster Isn’t Working.’

If Ms Sturgeon’s daily updates were the only frame of reference on how Scotland was responding to the challenges of the pandemic, the appearance would be that of a country properly testing its frontline workers, protecting its most vulnerable and supporting its businesses – a country whose leaders were open, honest and transparent while doing so.

SADLY, that is simply not the case. Last week, it was revealed that more than half of all Covid-19 deaths in Scotland took place in care homes. The same week it was confirmed the total deaths in care homes had now overtaken those in Scotland’s hospitals.

Part of the reason for these high numbers is the Scottish Government’s decision to decant more than a thousand hospital patients into care homes – without testing for Covid-19 – to free up beds.

In May, the Office for National Statistics found Scotland had double the ratio of virus deaths to care homes to England. The issue is a national scandal, but one that the Scottish Government has refused to address.

One way to belatedly protect care homes is to ensure care workers going in and out every day are Covid-19 free, to stop them passing the virus on to residents. The only way to do this is to regularly test care home workers – and just over a fortnight ago the First Minister bent to consistent political pressure and finally pledged to do so.

However, it is quite clear the ramping up of testing that such a regime would require simply has not happened.

Scotland has one of the lowest testing rates in Europe.

The Scottish Government claims capacity is now up to 15,500 tests per day, but the number of actual tests carried out has never risen above 6,519

– and on the last day of May dropped to less than 3,000.

It’s not just care homes and testing where the Scottish Government is failing, but also the economic fallout of Covid-19. Right now the UK Government is providing about £10 billion of support for Scotland.

Some of that – such as the furlough scheme – is operated directly by HMRC. However, some grants are in devolved areas where the UK Government transfers the money to Holyrood and the Scottish Government is in charge of dispersal.

At the start of the outbreak, the First Minister claimed every penny of UK support received would be passed on to Scottish firms in full.

But for owners of bars, restaurants, cafés and coffee shops, that promise came with a sting in the tail. In England, owners who had been told to shutter their premises could claim up to £25,000 per property to cover rent, rates and bills. In Scotland, the SNP tried to keep money back, arguing no matter how many properties a business had, it could only claim £25,000 in total. One of my constituents, with six coffee shops, was set to lose £125,000.

It took weeks of pressure to force a U-turn, but even then grants for additional properties in Scotland are only worth up to £18,500. Now, a group of publicans and café owners are taking the Scottish Government to court to try to claw back the rest.

THERE will be an inquiry into Scotland’s care home deaths and a court will judge whether denying Scottish businesses the same level of support as their UK peers is lawful, never mind fair. But one of the biggest issues is how much is being hidden by the SNP.

Yesterday, it emerged that nearly 1,000 patients contracted Covid-19 while in hospital for other conditions – 218 of them died. How do we know this? Not because of government transparency, but because the facts had to be dragged out by the media.

Scotland’s ‘ground zero’ outbreak event occurred at a Nike Conference in Edinburgh in February, where 25 people linked to the conference contracted Covid19. For months – until a TV documentary blew the lid on the affair – nobody knew because the Scottish Government kept it secret.

People who could have requested testing – co-workers, staff at the conference hotel, tour guides and kilt-fitters, all of whom were in close contact with delegates – knew nothing about it. Again, Ms Sturgeon’s default position was to argue semantics, rather than hold her hands up. The real worry with this secretive Government is what else they are keeping from us.

Asked to publish written briefings from her chief advisers during the first months of the crisis, Ms Sturgeon has made the astonishing claim that no such briefings exist.

Harold Wilson’s quip that ‘most of politics is presentation’ doesn’t account for the rest being the important bit.

In the teeth of a worldwide pandemic I’d take a bit less polish at the lectern, if it meant a bit more action on the ground.

Presentation may be the most of politics, but delivery is the bit that matters.